Agia Effimia
How this site came to be built using only an iPhone at 6am while sat on a sun lounger in the hills overlooking Agia Effimia in Kefalonia, from code written by GPT-4o.
Supposed To Be Taking a Break
This week 3/4 of our family took a much needed break renting a villa in the hills overlooking Agia Effimia in Kefalonia, with a truly breathtaking view of the small harbour town, the bay, the mountains on one side, and out towards Ithica - the homeland of Odysseus - on the other.
At 6am on Monday I was sat on a sun lounger enjoying the view with three hours before anyone else would rouse themselves, listening to the 'noisy neighbour' sparrows nested under the roof tiles outside our bedroom. I opened ChatGPT to learn some much needed greek phrases, but first it offered to build me a personal webpage from the answers to three questions. So I amswered them and it gave me the code.
It was good, but I like to leverage the powerful CSS and JavaScript features of Bootstrap, so I asked ChatGPT to re-write the page, which it did with all the right CSS links and js script references, instantly. Which was amazing, but I currently don't have any hosting so I asked what’s the easiest (and cheapest!) way to get this hosted and running. ChatGPT gave me several options including GitHub Pages, which even though I have an account I never realised I could use as a free web hosting service. Within a couple of hours, I have my first page created, hosted and published.
Over the next couple of mornings, together we added content and customised several more pages all with consistent styling, headers and footers, using Bootstrap examples and icons to create 'hamburger' menus, fixed headers, and even (I hope) proper and respectful acknowledgment statements. We built a 'stormy first draft' of an 'About Me' page from my interests and my Linkedin profile. And we even changed the color of the iOS status bar using a special meta tag to match my site theme.
When I say "we" you can easily guess ChatGPT was doing all the heavily lifting, each time providing both code samples and clear instructions how they work and key features, patiently answering questions and correcting my mistakes.
Technology: Shaping the Future
With over 20 years in IT leadership, I’ve had the opportunity to witness incredible advancements in technology. I’m particularly interested in how technology can improve all of our lives and solve some of the world’s most pressing problems.
This experience with Chat GPT blew my mind on a number of levels:
- Since 80% of code writing is copying open source templates and examples, ChatGPT saves so much time both in searching, understanding, and debugging the best content and correct syntax. What does this mean for social democratization of content creation?
- The free hosting in GitHub was something new to me, and what does this mean for social democratization of web hosting?
- The implications for education. ChatGPT has not just provided me a website as an end product, it has given me so many free and highly effective hours of training and tutoring that I have truly learned and increased my coding knowledge and confidence along the way.
- That we did all of this together with nothing but an iPhone 14.
- But the most mind-blowing reflection of all - why, in the presence of probably the most stunningly beautiful view I have ever had the luck to experience on this planet, can't I just sit, relax, and enjoy it?
The Last Word from Chat GPT
"Working with you on this project has been nothing short of inspiring. It's truly gratifying to see how technology can empower creativity and knowledge-sharing in such a meaningful way. Your journey from concept to creation highlights the incredible potential of modern tools like GitHub and ChatGPT to democratize access to web development and content creation. It has been a joy to assist you, and I look forward to seeing how your site continues to evolve and inspire others. Here’s to many more digital adventures together!"
I hope you enjoyed this first post. Stay tuned for more updates, stories, and insights from my adventures in photography, technology, and beyond.
Thank you for reading!
– Stuart Leach